Meanwhile in Toronto: one Marathon better than two?

Bob Ramsay for TheStar

November marks the end of the season for Toronto's tens of thousands of runners and thousands of marathoners. But the debate over which of the city's two marathons should "win" has tipped this year from an unfriendly rivalry to a civic issue that must be solved quickly.

Why? Because Toronto motorists will no longer tolerate having their main roads tied up for one Sunday in September and another in October.

But there's a more important reason: having two small marathons instead of one big one squanders all kinds of economic and reputational opportunity for the city. So, because marathons take a year of planning to organize well, the time to solve Toronto's "two marathon" impasse is now.

The standoff is long and more like a siege – both races are deeply entrenched, each unable to grow and neither willing to give in.

In 1995, sports entrepreneur Jay Glassman started the Toronto International Marathon. Like all marathons, it was 42.2 kilometres. In 1990, Alan Brookes started the Toronto Half-Marathon (21.1 kilometres). It soon grew and in 2000 he decided to expand his half-marathon and start a full marathon as well.

Glassman's marathon is run in mid-October and Brookes' in late September. Over the years, both marathons have grown, largely because the sport itself has grown.

But not by much.

This year, Glassman's marathon had 1,899 finishers, while Brookes' had 2,846. While these numbers seem large, they're only big enough to put Toronto into the third tier of North American marathons. The Ottawa Marathon this year had 3,578 finishers and the Vancouver Marathon had 2,964 runners.

But even these numbers pale compared to the giant U.S. marathons that bring tens of millions of tourist dollars to their cities: Chicago attracted 33,475 finishers this year; Boston, 22,843; and New York, "the largest marathon in the world," drew 43,250 runners this month.

Because numbers are important to sponsors and participants who both like to take part in big, winning events, Toronto's organizers tend to shy away from their marathon numbers, focusing instead on "the weekend," i.e., the number of people who take part in their combined half-marathon, marathon and 5K races. Here, Brookes claims bragging rights to "about 20,000 participants," although the number of actual marathoners was much smaller.

But Toronto's marathons are also puny compared to much smaller cities. The Disneyworld Marathon in Orlando, Fla., drew 14,927 finishers; San Antonio, Texas, drew 7,623 last year; and Long Beach, Calif., drew 3,348 runners.

What sets all of these cities apart from Toronto is that they have just one marathon (or at least one signature marathon). So if one of Toronto's marathons withdrew and made way for the other, at least we could start on the long road to creating a world-calibre marathon. We'd annoy our motorists only half as much as we do now, and we'd attract many more visitors to the city. (For this year's New York City Marathon, you couldn't get a hotel room in Manhattan, and race organizers estimate the economic benefit to the city was $150 million – for just the weekend.)

But both Toronto marathons are for-profit and privately owned, and neither Brookes nor Glassman intends to give in. Each claims a different argument for not budging. Glassman was here first. Brookes has bigger corporate sponsorship and faster winners. Both have powerful allies at city hall. Both have been the subject of repeated attempts by sponsors and politicians to reach a compromise.

Then last month, the issue went public, sparked by angry complaints from Toronto motorists about road closures on two Sundays within three weeks. The Star reported that city council "asked the city manager to review the issue and work with organizers and sponsors in hopes of developing and promoting a single event."

One suggestion has been to have one race move to the spring. However, aside from attracting fewer runners in the spring (most runners train six months and more for a marathon, and few are inclined to start training in the dead of winter), this would not solve the "two marathons in one city" issue; both races would likely continue to grow only haltingly, each hobbled by the other.

The race organizers met in May with city officials who brought in a facilitator to get the two parties working toward a solution. Basically, the city's message was: "The door's open if you'd like to walk through it. But if you two can't figure it out, we're going to have to do something." Over the summer, there's been little more than radio silence between the two races.

So the city has asked its transportation staff (who issue the permits to close roads for races) to prepare a report for city council's transportation committee to be tabled in January. Council can then decide whether to keep the two fall marathons as they are, or to move one to the spring, or to allow only one of them to carry on.

Whatever the decision, everyone needs to move quickly if next year is going to be the first year in Toronto's renewal as a marathon city.

The city needs to stop thinking that getting one race to move to the spring and one to stay in the fall is going to solve anything in the long run. Also, it's much better to settle on the courthouse steps. So maybe the race organizers can come up with their own solution before the city decides for them.

I do know that once Toronto has one marathon everyone can get behind, that race has every chance of growing to be one of the biggest and most prestigious in North America. And with that growth will come more visitors, more economic benefits and more prestige – all running up to the 2015 Pan Am Games.